


Reconciliation

by JoAsakura



Series: Refuse/Refuge [3]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Old men being assholes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 13:31:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8104243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoAsakura/pseuds/JoAsakura
Summary: Jack and Gabriel sort of come to terms.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Oh god. Plot.
> 
>  
> 
> There's about 24 hours between "We might be heroes" and this fic. It's a haze of fighting, booze, tentacle sex and Gabriel stuffing Jack in the trunk of a stolen car.

 

At first, Jack couldn't figure out what was wrong, and he lay very still.

His mouth tasted like whiskey and ash, and he hurt, true. But he always hurt, bones that healed too fast, bullet wounds that hadn't closed right, too many home-brew surgeries to pull shrapnel out of places where shrapnel definitely didn't belong. SEP had never explained, fully, what they'd done to them, and Jack had been a grunt back in the day. You didn't ask.

But the hurt was overlaid with a languorous heaviness, and the ache in his bones was actually sort of pleasant, so he cracked open one gummy eye to breathe in the scent of dusty linen and burning, abyssal metal. (Safehouse.) He thought first, then shifted, tangled sheets rasping across his bare skin. (Gabriel.) Light streamed through pale yellow curtains into a sparse, airy room. He remembered picking out the paintings on the wall, abstract streaks of paint that reminded him of sunset.

Gabriel had hated them. Didn't like abstract art.

Jack closed his eyes again, trying to remember the chain of events that had led them here, and his entire body twitched in echoing need as he very vividly recalled destroying a bookcase on the way in, the two of them on each other as if they'd been starving the entire time they were apart. Feeling his face flush a little, Jack laughed quietly into the pillow. (Christ, we're a mess.) He could still feel the alien touch of Gabriel's new form inside of him and the sick twist of desire he felt in his guts was almost embarrassing.

From another room, he could hear the eerie boom of Reaper’s heavily modulated voice, and he stilled, listening to Gabriel get louder with frustration.

“…not my fault the Federales can’t fish the body of one pathetic old man out of the river.” Reaper growled like thunder and Jack ground himself a little against the bed, spine shivering. “I fucked him up real good. No way even someone like him was gonna walk away from what I did. Body fell in the river, because he's always been a gigantic pain in the ass, and you fuckers didn’t pay me enough to get my coat wet.”

Jack snorted at Gabriel's tone and then reached to rub his face.

 _CLANK_!

And stopped as he realised one hand was handcuffed to the bedframe. (What the fuck.) He thought as Reaper continued to drone on in the background. He tested it for a moment to make sure it wasn’t some sort of super soldier-proof alloy, and when it proved to just be normal steel, he sighed and snapped it off. (What the fuck, really)

~~

Gabriel was drinking coffee and reading a local paper, Reaper’s mask on the table beside him when Jack shambled into the little kitchen wearing a pair of faded old SEP sweats. Behind him, the bookcase and it's contents lay in ruins in the little living room. “I don’t know what I’m more insulted by: your description of my demise or these fucking handcuffs. Did you really think that would work?” Jack asked, pointedly ignoring the pile of books. He jingled the mangled cuffs in front of him, them dropped them on the table.

Gabriel scowled up at him. “…Well, you’re in here whining at me instead of just running off to do something stupid again, so clearly my plan worked.” He snapped the paper back up.

Jack scratched through the greying hair on his belly, and opened a cabinet. The safehouse was stocked with dried and canned foods, and a collection of other emergency supplies, and he pawed through them, looking for the prize he knew was probably hidden behind the freeze-dried cheese cans. “I grew up on a farm, Gabe, I know bullshit when I smell it.”

“Fuck you and put that vodka down, it’s like 9am.” Gabriel didn’t bother to look up from his newspaper again. “Kettle’s on the stove, have some coffee, trash monster.”

“Just for that, I’m keeping the goddamn beard.” Jack put the bottle back and retrieved a packet of powdered coffee with a muttered curse. “I’m surprised you kept this place on the books.”

“Technically it’s not on anyone's books. It’s still the property of Mr and Mr Jacob and Michael King of Seattle. Their little vacation property, remember? The shell corporation we set up to pay for some of these never got burned in the fall, so..” Gabriel shrugged blandly, but the smoke coiling around him made an agitated little fidget of emotion. “I’ve made sure to keep it quiet.”

“So, you told them I’m dead.” Jack shifted, waiting for the water to come back to a boil. “Thanks, I guess?”

“You’re welcome, by the way. And you are gonna stay dead and off the fucking radar this time or else we’re both on a hypertrain straight into the wood chipper.” Gabriel carefully set the paper down, and Jack could feel his gaze burning against his skin.

“Great, so, what, I’m supposed to stay here and plant tomatoes and jerk off to daytime TV, there, Cthulhu?” Jack snorted, gesturing broadly with a chipped mug. The kitten printed on the side had long faded into a sad, fuzzy ghost. “Gabe, you do realise you're working for the people who had us killed, right??"

“God, I regret not shooting you in the head already.” Gabriel scowled. “I hate how hard shit is with you."

“Wow, that is NOT what you were saying last night.” Jack scratched at his beard and grinned.

"Shut up." Gabriel didn't exactly get out of the seat, but the smoke curled around Jack and in a blink, Gabriel was in his space, pressing him against the kitchen counter. "You're blindly blundering around in a uniform you cobbled together from shit you stole from a bike shop, playing vigilante, asshole." He growled against Jack's jaw. Tendrils of black smoke hardened into viscous coils, stroking Jack's scarred flesh. "You are going to get yourself fucking killed for real. For once in your fucking life, be obedient and stay here. Grow your fucking tomatoes and let me do my job."

Jack didn't even blink as he smashed the coffee cup into the side of Gabriel's head then slapped the control on the nearby range hood. The sudden SHOOMP of the vacuum was drowned out by Gabriel's furious roar.

" **JACK YOU SON OF A BITCH!** "

~~

With practiced speed, Jack dressed and gathered up his bloodied jacket and his gear, hurrying to the doorway. The air was split with a sudden boom and he felt a burning slice dig across his arm.

Jack looked down at the graze left behind by one of Gabriel's shotgun shells and dropped his gear. "YOU SHOT ME, YOU MOTHERFUCKER, YOU ACTUALLY SHOT ME?" He shouted as he turned on his heel. He completed the turn just in time to get a punch in the face and the two stumbled out the front door into the gravel and grass beyond.

"You! Can't! Win!This!" Gabriel roared as he brought his fist down, Jack catching it on the final blow. Gabriel dissolved in his grip, reforming to drag Jack into a chokehold. "For fuck's sake let me fucking do this! JUST STAY DOWN!"

"You know me, Gabo, I always... could take a... beating... better'n'you." Jack wheezed out, hauling himself to his feet enough to slam them both back into the side of the battered jeep in the driveway. Gabriel proofed away in a black cloud as the vehicle skidded across the gravel, but he had to relinquish his grip.

Jack rubbed his throat as he leaned back against the dented fender. "I can't believe you shot me, you asshole."

"I grazed you, you big baby. You've had worse shaving. And you sucked me up in a fucking range hood." Gabriel flopped down on the gravel. "Goddamnit Jackie, why do you have to be such a pain in the ass?"

Jack staggered over to him, and kicked him in the leg before sitting down. "Just tell me what the fuck you have going on, Gabe. Are you really working for *Talon*?"

Gabriel sprawled out in the driveway. "Once I got my shit together and I realized what happened, I figured it was my best play." He finally said, and Jack lay beside him, the two of them looking up at the clouds overhead. "To survive and figure out what their end game was."

"They know who you are, then."Jack muttered, squinting at the sky, one eye half-swollen shut.

"Yeah. I'm a mad dog killer experiment, hell bent on revenge. " Gabriel snorted, then sobered. "Look, when they brought me back..." He held up a hand, brown skin shifting with shadow and decay. "like this... I came back with a hunger. And when I kill, I take..." He let his hand drop on Jack's thigh. "Souls. Life force. UGH, I don't know and but I take because it makes the pain stop. It hurts all the time, Jack, being like this. So I do jobs, some of them are for Talon, the pain stops and maybe they trust me a little more each time so I can find out more about them."

Jack rolled over to look at him. "I'm sorry, Gabe. I'm sorry for everything. If I could..."

"You didn't do _this_. Our little war didn't do _this_. They took Angie's tech and made me a monster." Gabriel sighed. "Remember when we first ran into each other up in Chicago a while back? They told me to check out who was brute forcing their way through Overwatch Depots. I was sure you were dead, _they_ weren't. When I realised it was you, I thought I knew how it was gonna go."

"I didn't want to risk using any override codes I knew. I was trying to keep myself on the down low. As I recall, I punched you in the face and cracked that stupid mask, then you threw me off a building." Jack snorted. "That sucked, by the way."

"I was so sure you'd been in on it. I had accepted you were dead, and that I'd never get my revenge, that I'd have to settle for figuring out who the other players were. And then you were alive and Talon was ordering me to bring you in dead or alive. I had so many goddamn revenge fantasies that day, let me tell you."

"Sexy revenge fantasies or just, like, regular ones?" Jack frowned, then shook his head.

"Shut up. And then I saw your fucking face in Dorado." Gabriel scrubbed his hands over his face. "You have always been the worst liar I've ever known, Jack."

"I'm not sure that's a compliment." Jack lay back, feeling the bruises begin to fade. "Thanks?"

"Talon wants you, or at least your corpse." Gabriel said. "And when I saw you, when I got that you weren't in on any of it, I realised, I couldn't let them have you."

"One super soldier wasn't enough?" Jack replied, shading his eyes from the sun. "How'd they know it was me?"

"My handler said the 76 was the giveaway." Gabriel glanced over at him. "I didn't think anything of it at the time. Son of a bitch."

Jack reached behind his head to run his fingers over the ink beneath his hair. His skull was tender where he'd hit the jeep. "The only ones who'd know what that meant was you or SEP."

Gabriel covered his face, then peered over at Jack.

"Let me in on this Gabe." Jack took his hand. "Please."

"Shit, I hate when you ask nicely."

 


End file.
